One relatively early vote from yesterday’s marathon final D.C. Council legislative session of the year was the approval of a number of changes to the District’s ever-evolving gun laws. (Quick aside: Must the Council always pull out these last-minute legislate-a-thons? They often make for bad laws, not to mention force local scribes to try to fit far too many votes into far too few words. And now back to our regularly scheduled post.)

The Post mentions the passage of the Firearms Registration Amendment Act in its story, which requires gun owners to re-register their weapon of choice every three years and mandates classroom instruction and firing range training for gun owners. (City Desk has more details on the training requirement debate.) Interestingly, Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who has been at the helm of crafting the District’s new gun laws ever since this summer’s Heller decision, voted against the training requirement, arguing that there is no proof that five hours of classroom time will make for safer gun owners. D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles is quoted as saying that the training requirements aren’t his preference, but he will defend them if challenged in court.

Predictably, the NRA has already threatened a court battle, calling the training requirements “phony barriers” to gun ownership for law-abiding citizens. It’s an interesting position considering that the NRA runs a whole host of training and safety courses (Eddie Eagle is a personal favorite), but not actually surprising.

Looking back on the months since the Heller decision, the District’s new gun laws have come together in a haphazard fashion. Sure, the city has been, ummmmm, under the gun from Congress to act on the Supreme Court’s somewhat vague ruling, but every other month or so we hear of new requirements being added to old ones. It would be nice if sometime in 2009, city officials sat down and finally hashed out a final set of regulations and requirements that were easy to understand and even easier to defend.